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Midi cyphering

Connecting Hauptwerk to MIDI organs, sequencers, ...
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MRGreenwood

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Midi cyphering

PostTue May 18, 2004 8:48 am

I have recently added a 2nd manual to my Hauptwerk set-up which now comprises 2 * Evolution MK-261 keyboard controllers for the manuals, + a midi pedalboard from Classic Organs.

I am merging up the 3 midi signals via 2 * Phil Ress Little 2M midi merge units connected in series, which then feeds into the single midi-in on my Soundblaster Audigy card.

Since adding in the additional manual (and a second midi merge unit), once or twice an hour I am getting cyphering and I can only release the affected notes by resounding the affected notes or doing a Hauptwerk “Reset All Notes”.

Does anyone know if this is a problem with using two merge units in series? Would I be better buying a single 3:1 merge unit?

Thanks

Martin Greenwood

P.S. I am just about to de-solder the controller wheel within one of the MK-261's and instead wire in a lead running from a 2nd hand swell pedal I got hold of. I hope that the additional midi messages that come from use of a swell pedal doesn't compound the existing intermittent problem.
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mdyde

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PostTue May 18, 2004 10:16 am

Personally, I prefer to use a multi in/out MIDI interface, rather than MIDI merge units. It seems that it might be more robust to me, and that timing is likely to be better, but I can't speak from experience, never having used merge units. M-audio makes some mutli-port MIDI interfaces, as does Steinberg. I use the Steinberg Midex 8 with 8 input ports and 8 outputs, and I've never had any problems.

Martin.
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Martin_Dümig

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PostTue May 18, 2004 3:48 pm

Hello Martin Greenwood,

merging midi data may become a rather complicated task, up to impossible regarding the input data. If the information is filling 100% of the line, no more data may be merged in. The point is, how many data is produced by your keyboards and how intensively the midi-controllers are used (which produce much more data than the keystrokes).

The Philip Rees Little 2m Units is line powered, that means, that the energy to drive the unit and to drive the output of the unit is taken from one of the inputs. If you are cascading this units, you have to watch, that the input marked with POWER is driven by one of the keyboards, and not from the other Philip Rees unit, because then the other keyboard has to give the power for two Philip Rees and the whole output.

I don't know how big the memory of the Philip Rees unit is to store MIDI-Data from one input while data is flowing from the other input to the output. The situation becomes worse while cascading this units. So i think it would be much better to use a four to one merger unit or an input unit for the computer with more MIDI-inputs.

Happy organ playing - Martin Dümig
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cdatzko

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PostTue May 18, 2004 5:03 pm

Martin_Dümig wrote:merging midi data may become a rather complicated task, up to impossible regarding the input data. If the information is filling 100% of the line, no more data may be merged in. The point is, how many data is produced by your keyboards and how intensively the midi-controllers are used (which produce much more data than the keystrokes).


I am using a CTM64 from Doepfer (http://www.doepfer.de/) for my Pedal. I have a Yamaha Clavinova connected into MIDI-In and the MIDI-Out to the PC. Although the CTM64 has only 48 Bytes (yes, not Kb, BYTES) input buffer and 30 Bytes output buffer it has only occured to me very few times that notes were dropped. The only occasions that it happend to me was when my midi pedal was having a bad electical connection thus causing very quick on/off messages. And in these cases only one note was missing from the manual. I have never had a "sticky note", most probably the CTM has some kind of prioritising of off messages rather than on messages.

What I'm saying: As long as no SysEx messages or other data intensive messages are sent it should be no problem. I'd prefer of course a multi-port MIDI-In box if I had one, but at least for one manual and pedal this solution proves quite sufficient. If I were to set up a more professional system I would probably still at least try to connect the MIDI-Out of a keyboard the the MIDI-In of the next and set all devices to copy all MIDI messages to the MIDI-Out.

Has anyone heard of Multi-Input MIDI-Breakout-Boxes supported by USB? This way one could take a notebook to be flexible (I'm thinking of a portable external Hautwerk module for my band - this way I could just sit where I am and play the liturgical music while during the remaining parts of the service I could play with my band).

Christian.
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bwwolfe

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Midi cyphering

PostSat May 22, 2004 2:38 am

... 2 * Evolution MK-261 keyboard controllers for the manuals, + a midi pedalboard from Classic Organs. I am merging up the 3 midi signals via 2 * Phil Ress Little 2M midi merge units connected in series ... into the single midi-in on my Soundblaster Audigy card.

Since adding in the additional manual (and a second midi merge unit), once or twice an hour I am getting cyphering and I can only release the affected notes by resounding the affected notes or doing a Hauptwerk “Reset All Notes”....


I've had and sometimes have a similar problem.

I have the Classic Organ Works pedalboard and 3 keyboard stack and am using a MIDISPORT 2x2 that I borrowed from a friend. (Previously I was using my SoundBlaster MIDI in and an Evolution MK-361C controller.)

Classic Organ Works products have built in MIDI merging. Oddly enough I was unable to combine / merge the keyboard stack with the pedalboard. I couldn't get them to work at all with my SoundBlaster MIDI and was using a MIDISPORT 1x1 for the pedalboard and the SoundBlaster for my Evolution keyboard. When the keyboard stack arrived I had frequent cipher problems, using their built in MIDI merge and finally borrowed a 2x2 from a friend.

Had I only known I would have bought the MTU 5x5 which is about the same price or cheaper than the MIDISPORT 4x4.

Merging "should" work but, I agree, separate interfaces are best. I'm using the built it Classic Organ Works merging for the 3 manual keyboard stack and am using a separate channel for the pedalboard. Once in awhile I get a cipher that is impossible to reproduce.

I suppose the cipher is good practice for my church's 1923 Kilgen that has 3 ciphers on the Swell.

If you get a 4x4 or 5x5 interface you'll be better off.

IMHO
http://midiorgan.com - Your MIDI Organ Resource
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mdyde

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PostSat May 22, 2004 5:37 am

One other point - make sure that known bug number 11 isn't the culprit - see the known bugs page on the main site. It only occurs if you have the MIDI inputs configured in a particular way, which is easy to avoid.

Martin.

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